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John Peters
 

 




 

 
John Peters
 

 


John Peters, a linebacker for the Union College football team in Schenectady, New York, was named captain of the team for the 2009 season. It&rsquo;s quite an honor for the 6-0 junior. At Union&rsquo;s football banquet on Saturday, January 24 John got the Most Improved Defensive Player award. As a sophomore he broke the school&rsquo;s record for sacks with 22.
Union College is an NCAA Division III school that plays in the Liberty League in New York. For the 2008 season, Peters was selected for the Liberty League all-star second team. A biology major, Peters hopes to get into med school, which is appropriate because his father John is a doctor. John and his wife and Debbie Peters live in Clarks Summit. 
Juggling academics and football is tough, but John takes both seriously. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been able to balance both. Some people have trouble trying to do both school and football, but if you&rsquo;re dedicated to both, it&rsquo;s not that hard, you don&rsquo;t have a lot of free time.&rdquo;
Peters was lucky enough to find a school that strived to be as well- balanced as him.
&ldquo;What I love about the school is that it&rsquo;s academically oriented, but has a strong football tradition.&rdquo;
With one year left to play in his collegiate football career, Peters is already making goals for next season.
&ldquo;Next season, I&rsquo;d like to win more than five games,&rdquo; said Peters. &ldquo;This season we went 5-4. Three of the games were really close, it could have easily been an 8-1 season, but there&rsquo;s always next year.&rdquo;
So why is this a story for the Dispatch? Well, John Peters has local football genes. His grandfather Angelo &ldquo;Smitty&rdquo; Shandra is a Browntown native who played for the Pittston Township football team in the late 1940s. Smitty has another grandson, Brian Peters, playing at John Hopkins.
Known as the &ldquo;Mighty Mites&rdquo; the Pittston Township team didn&rsquo;t have a home field but that didn&rsquo;t stop them from going undefeated in 1947 when Angelo was a fullback and linebacker. 
Today Angelo is 77. He has been living in Scranton for 50 years. Recalling that 1947 team he said, &ldquo;We only had 18 on the roster. We went to games in the back of a coal truck.&rdquo;
The coach was John &ldquo;Hoppy&rdquo; Hopkins. He was an innovator who brought the T-formation to Pittston Township. Charles Salvo was the quarterback. One of the wins in the undefeated &rsquo;47 season was a 13-12 upset of Pittston High. &ldquo;Smitty&rdquo; scored the second touchdown with a 30-yard return of a fumble recovery. Borino scored what proved to be the winning extra point on a &ldquo;plunge.&rdquo; Pittston&rsquo;s Sheridan scored in the fourth quarter to make it 13-12, but Pittston Township stopped the run for the point. Pittston Township beat Jenkins Township 19-13 after being behind 13-0, scoring the winning touchdown with 37 seconds to play. Smitty called the play himself. &ldquo;I said, hey look it, give the ball to me and I&rsquo;ll loop it to Beanie.&rdquo;

Beanie Donnelly was the end. The quarterback pitched it to Smitty and, just as he called it, he looped the winning Td pass to Smitty over the head of Rossi, JT&rsquo;s best player, who came rushing in.
On November 1, PT ran wild against Moosic winning 37-6. Smitty caught a long pass to the 10-yard line in the first quarter and then carried in for the touchdown. Later in that game after he was tackled, he went back to the huddle and one of his teammates said something was wrong with Smitty&rsquo;s little finger. He looked down and saw that the end of the finger was broken off at the last joint and was hanging on by the skin. 
Because of the finger injury Smitty missed the last game the next week, which turned out to be a Monday night game. They had been scheduled to play St. John&rsquo;s on a Thursday but it was postponed by rain. The game was moved to West Pittston Stadium on Monday night, November 10. PT was undefeated and St. John&rsquo;s was winless, but St. John&rsquo;s pulled what had to be an upset by tying the Mighty Mites 6-6. &ldquo;Bozo&rdquo; Connors tied the game for St. John&rsquo;s with a run in the fourth quarter, after starting the game as a lineman. Who knows but that finger injury might have cost PT a chance to win that game. A doctor reattached the finger, but to this day, over 60 years later, the finger is still frozen.
After he graduated in 1948 Smitty joined the Army. He was an infantryman in Korea and was one of the earliest causalities of the war. He was injured in combat. &ldquo;All shot up&rdquo; is the way he describes it. He came back here in 1950. He married a Port Griffith girl, Marion Rinkus, and got a job at the Tobyhanna Depot. He and Marion raised three daughters. They have lived in Scranton for 50 years.
Smitty said Beanie Donnelly, the player who caught that winning pass against Jenkins Township, also went to Korea, but never came back. He is still listed as MIA.

***






Eric Fay of Duryea, former standout sprinter from Pittston Area, was mentioned in two of Monmouth University track team&rsquo;s press releases in the last few weeks. He was part of Monmouth&rsquo;s distance medley relay that came in fifth at the Gothum Cup in New York City on January 17. He also traveled to the University of Delaware this past weekend and finished eighth in the 400 meter at the Thomson Invitational on January 31. He is a sophomore at Monmouth majoring in computer science.

‘smitty’ Shandra Recalls The 1947 Mighty Mites